


Seasons of Sand

by Canarii



Series: Seasons of Sand [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Game of Thrones Fusion, F/F, Female-Centric, Gen, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 19:38:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3867319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canarii/pseuds/Canarii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sara Lance has been Everywhere. A wayward daughter returns home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seasons of Sand

"Sara, where have you been?” The knight in green whispers, and she says,

“Everywhere."

A girl with more dreams then sense had stolen away on the Queen's Gambit that night, a child. And the woman who stands on the same streets now is not her.

Sara Lance had been spat out by the cold waters of the narrow sea, and had found herself in chains. That child had been sold in a crowded market to a man in a robe of black and white, that had seen something in her eyes, and the scowl she wore through a split lip and bloodied teeth.

She began her service in the hidden city, and her new master was Death. Sara Lance was shed like her chains, and she learned to be silent as a shadow, quick as a serpent. She tried to learn to be no one.

She failed.

She couldn't let go of the memory of her mother's laugh, her father's strong arms or sister's smile. So the girl-woman who was no longer Sara Lance ran farther still, and found her new life in blood and dust.  
It’s in the fighting pits of the free cities she is given a name. 

Canary. No one thinks to bet on the small, Westerosi girl with the yellow hair, even if they have heard she is quick as a snake, quiet as a shadow. Slave and freemen alike die at her hand, and her name is called from the stands by every vicious crowd. Bloody bird, black canary, for the colors she wears. Ebony and gold. The colors of her house, because Sara Lance is not quite gone, not yet.

It’s in Voltantis where she feels dark eyes watching her from the stands. The girl they call Canary breaks a mans neck with a length of chain and looks up to find only one onlooker not cheering.

The woman is draped in black and red, and she does not call out, only nods, and smiles behind her veil.

"You fight very well, for such a little bird", the silent lady finds her after the fight, washing blood off her face in a trough.

“What is it to you?" the Canary chirps, and only then does she see the sigil on the brooch the woman wears, a demons head, the mark of the royal house of Dorne.

"I wonder how you have come to be so far from home with such skill Taer’al-Asfer.”

The Canary splashes water on her face, turning it up to scowl at the woman. The princess. For the Ra's of Dorne had only two children, both daughters.

"What's that mean?"

"It is your name, canary, in my tongue." The princess says, sweet as honey, then removes her veil and beneath it she has a lion’s smile. The girl almost smiles back.

Three years later, Taer’al-Asfer wakes up beside her lover in Nanda Parbat, having dreamed again of what Sara Lance had lost. The summons for the royal wedding arrive that day, and within the week Nyssa was preparing to go to the capital in her father’s stead. Taer’al-Asfer’s stomach sunk at the thought of returning to the city that had once been her home, to her family. She is no longer the daughter of the Captain of the city guard. She has been slave, shadow, a killer for sport, and now the paramour of a foreign princess. Her family would likely prefer she had died. 

But whispers come, the country is on the brink of war, and King’s Landing is fraught with dangers. She has to go. She has to know they’re safe.

It is hooded and veiled that she arrives in the city at Nyssa’s side, wrapped in black and gold, with little but her eyes showing. And even those are liberally masked in kohl the first time they ride back into the streets she’d called home. 

She watches them.

Her father is grayer than she remembered, the lines on her mother’s face deeper. Her sister... when she had left Laurel had been a serious girl of fifteen, elegant and politely navigating her way through the suiters that had begun to flock to her door. She’s a woman grown now, more beautiful than ever, and she makes her way through the viper’s nest of the court with a cunning and grace that is enviable. 

They don’t see her, Taer’al-Asfer makes certain of that. 

She cuts the throat of a man she finds attacking a girl in Fleabottom one night. The girl, a scruffy creature with cropped dark hair and wide eyes blinks up at her. What a picture she must have made, dark silks and golden hair falling loose from her scarf. The child stammers a thank you, before scampering back into the dark of the streets. 

It’s foolish, but she goes back the next night, perhaps in hope that spilling the blood of scum might make the ache in her chest go away. It doesn’t, but that’s when she sees him.

Taer’al-Asfer had heard the story, that the heir to Queenscrown had returned from the dead, to save his house from the brink of ruin. But Oliver Queen had been someone Sara Lance had known, a lifetime ago. 

It’s a man she hardly recognizes that stands before her now, tall, strong of arm and scarred beneath the green and silver of his house arms. Even in the dark, he seems to see right through her. She wears no veil, and her hair is unbound beneath her scarf, and even years in the sun which have tanned and freckled her have not changed her face.

“Sara?” He whispers, and something in her chest twists as she remembers a boy, a boy calling her name in a slave market in another life, crying under the brand.

“Sara….where have you been?”

“Everywhere”, Sara Lance says.


End file.
